Mortality grounds us

Living 2022

Director: Oliver Hermanus

You remember a time when you were looking at the world that passed on by. You see the stream of people all grown up, handsome, poised, brimming with confidence. You tell yourself that you want to be like them with lots of friends and be likeable. You just could not wait to grow up. In your inner circle, you have friends who think highly of you. You consider yourself the life and soul of a party.

And poof! You find yourself to be an old fool. You are a party pooper, a bore, a high-strung individual and a killjoy. People shun you. The younger ones would rather stay away from you to have a good time. They look at you as Scrooge and find excuses to stay away with a six-foot pole.

You wonder whatever happened to the bubbly youngster that you once were. Have you become that lone child in the playground with a perpetual sourpuss face who does not want to share his toys?

We sometimes lock ourselves in a comfort zone. We think we are all mighty and immortal and that there is no need to conform to the needs of others. Everything changes when death stares you in the face. Suddenly you realise the futility of it all - the pride, the Ego and the meaningless self-aggrandisement. You want to leave your legacy, nevertheless. You become one-minded, wishing to leave behind something for people to remember you by. The mind is willing, but the body is not. You become jealous of all the young people with such a positive outlook on life and with one thing they have, but you do not - time.

Mortality grounds us. It gives a purpose in life. It questions the meaning of all life and, in its way, tries to justify the reason for our existence.

In a purely artistic way, this message is conveyed in this film. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1953 masterpiece 'Ikiru'. 'Ikiru', in turn, was based on Leo Tolstoy's short story. Read here about Ikiru.

Set in 1953, in the office of the City Council of London, where stiff upper lip and haughty British class consciousness rules, the head of the Department, Mr Middleton, is diagnosed as having terminal cancer. He is a lonely man, having lost his wife earlier in life. He is not exactly close to his son and daughter-in-law. They see him as a necessary burden they must tolerate before they can lay their hands on his retirement money to improve their living conditions. Mr Middleton is not exactly pally with his subordinates, either. He believes in maintaining his distance from them as the hierarchical order dictates.

His chance to meet with one of his younger workers outside work as he digests his disease helps to re-ignite the ember he had lost. He made his life ambition to push for a children's playground that some members of the public have been tirelessly seeking.

Middleton dies, leaving everyone talking about his dedication. His workers vow to strive to improve the system. After the wake, as everyone returns to their daily routine, it is business as usual, back to its usual snail's pace. Nothing actually changed. All the resolutions to change are just small talks in the passing.

Without the fear of death, or if the thought of death is far away, people become complacent.

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Power, a double-edged sword that cuts own hand!

Cairo Conspiracy (aka Boy from Heaven; 2022)
Director: Tarik Saleh

What started as a guide for mankind to live in symbiosis with Nature and his fellow beings has come to this. Religion used to be a solace for the broken-hearted and for broken dreams. It is unbelievable how some doe-eyed ignorant (read stupid) voters in some Eastern States of the Malaysian Peninsula are hoodwinked into believing that a vote for the Islamic party is a ticket to secure a place in Jannah in the afterworld. Can you get any stupider than that? Not to forget the self-centred foot soldiers who want to re-instate the past glory of the Levant kingdom without a thought for the innocent collateral damage just because they want to spend eternity with virgins (or grapes in the new revised version of the scriptures!). The only problem is that, in a body-less afterlife, they would not have a body for bodily pleasures.

Recently, the cabal of non-god-believing leftists took it upon themselves to destroy the career of an 87-year-old Tibetan godman with his 80 years record of unblemished career by ridiculously editing his innocent grandfatherly encounter with a worshipper to give it a pedophilic overtone. 

Religion has turned into a political tool, a money-churning machine, a puppet string to control the masses (with a silent 'm') besides fulfilling its traditional role of being the opiate of choice to the public. It herds its followers to think collectively without taxing the grey cells or changing the status quo. Thinking outside the box is not encouraged. Decision-making is best left to the elitists, the clerics, as they know what is best for mankind. They are the moral guardians, which they enforce with iron fists and supposed zero-tolerance.

Unlike Plato's Republic, modern democracies are not ruled by philosophers. Following the shenanigans of the Church in Europe, there became a distinct separation between governments and the Church (or other religions in other countries). Following Khomeni's establishment of a true Islamic Republic in Iran, increasingly, many clerics have been slowly exerting their influence. Invoking the name of God seems to cow all believers into submission. In most countries, clerics and politicians become strange bedfellows; one leeching on the other for power. The dynamics between these two unholy unions are anything but sincere. There is constant Hawkeye surveillance on the other and an ongoing ploy to reign in the other's control of resources.

The Egyptian-Swedish filmmaker, Tarik Saleh, had no plans to make this movie as the storyline seems to undermine an institution considered most prestigious amongst the Sunni sect, Cairo's al-Azhar University. His previous film, 'Nile Hilton Incident' (2017), got him in trouble with the Egyptian authorities for painting the Egyptian police as corrupt. And Saleh was not welcomed in Egypt. So, most of the shooting had to be done in Turkey and Sweden instead.

Adam, a son of a fisherman from a small town, is chosen to study at al-Azhar University. His freshman year saw the sudden death of the Great Imam. He soon finds himself a pawn in the skullduggery of the appointment of the new Imam. He has to assume the role of the Secret Service to discover the clandestine activities of opposing factions in trying to win the coveted position over.

He finally realises that power is a double-edged sword that can cut one's own hand.

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Life and the stories it yarns.

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry 2022

Director: Hans Canosa

(based on Gabrielle Zevin's novel)

So often, we have heard that truth is stranger than fiction; stranger things happen in real life compared to what happens in our imagination. On the other hand, we were told to be competent to sieve fact from fiction, what is possible, plausible or probable and what is not.

Occasionally we are advised not to live in Lalaland but to descend to reality, not to yearn for that Prince Charming or Snow White to sweep us off our feet. The fact is that the biological clock is ticking away, and opportunities are flying by. They tell us 'carpe diem', seize the moment, not wait for the perfect ending and not expect to live a happy life forever and ever. Life is so full of twists and turns, more convoluted than spaghetti if one reflects on it in his twilight stage of life. 

This film will excite an eternal bibliophile. A gadget-savvy person would not understand the excitement about the physical book, as ebooks and Kindles do the same. But then, we all know how books flock together, like silverfish flock to old books. Like silverfish, too, books will survive the assault of modern technology pretty much like how silverfishes, one of the most ancient insects, have been around for maybe 400 million years. 

I made it to this movie to see a speaking Kunal Nayyar, who had spent a few seasons of 'Big Bang Theory' tongue-tied in front of his female co-stars. And I wanted to see how he, a 'brown' man, would have performed in a rom-com. He did pretty well, except there were too many things to chew in the two-hour presentation that so many things flew by that acting is compromised for storytelling.

An alcoholic bookshop owner and a widower go on with life in his dingy bookshop on an island, brooding over his wife's demise and generally pessimistic about life. All these changes when a young child is left in his shop. Her mother is found dead. And a book salesperson stops by to promote her books. Love blossoms, and the bookshop owner, AJ Fikry, finds purpose in life until the uncertainties of life throw another spanner in the works.

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W

A re-look at history?

Asia Reborn

(A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism)

Author: Prasenjit K Basu

The 21st century, especially the second half, is considered an Asian century. Still, no single nation is said to have successfully challenged the Pax Americana of the late 20th and early 21st century. A continent ravaged by events from the 18th through the 20th century, Asia is making a comeback.

As they say, time is cyclical. From the Common Era (C.E.) to the 1600s, when Europe and the Middle East were pretty much in the dark ages, more than half of the world's GDP came from India and China. Both these countries were the world's superpowers and ruled the greatest oceans. Suddenly, there were either domesticated or decided to close their doors. The European and Arabic powers, who all these while were running around like headless chickens, morphed into a force to be reckoned with. They ushered in mercantilism, slavery and colonialism. They embraced Industrial Revolution while the rest of the world was napping.

In the prophetic words of Ibn Khaldun, history is a cyclical process in which sovereign powers come into existence, get stronger, lose their strengths and are conquered by other sovereign powers over time. More precisely, every community is uncivilised initially and tries to acquire power through its inborn fighting and kinsmanship. The generation after that, after living in the cushy life of their conquest, slowly loses their killer instinct and becomes 'civilised'. The subsequent generations will be like the occupants their ancestors had conquered, cultured but weak and without prowess. Barring exceptions, he estimated that a dynasty would last about 120 years. The Ottoman Empire is said to be an exception. It lasted 624 years. The reason for its longevity is the realisation of this edict, the necessary motivation infused by extraordinary leaders, solid traditions and morals, and wise decisions. Even then, the mighty Caliph soon became the sick man of Europe and crumpled on its weight.

As the Europeans ventured out on their voyages to the East, they quickly usurped all the wealth available along the way they went. Kingdoms after kingdom tumbled with their shenanigans and their meddling in local politics. Close to 200 years, it was the rule of the European race over the colonised Asiatic lands.

The turning point came around with Commodore Matthew Perry's legendary stop of his battalion at Kyodo port in 1868. The Japanese woke up to the fact that the world had wised up while they practised a closed-door policy. The Meiji Restoration was an effort to sponge all knowledge from the maestros and improve their own capability. Their efforts proved fruitful when the Japanese defeated their arch-enemy in the north, the Russians, in 1905.

Industrialisation required raw materials, coal, steel and petroleum. Their neighbouring lands, like Manchuria, Sakhalin Islands, and other parts, were run over for this purpose. When the Western powers decided to place a trade embargo on Japan, they had to source their raw material beyond their comfort zone. The Japanese monarch, conforming to the increasing nationalistic wave, decided to follow in the footsteps of the Western imperialist power. That was the Eastern Front of World War 2.

WW2 was an eye-opener to the sleeping giants of Asia. Each was embroiled in its own struggle with the Western colonial yoke. India was caught deep in self-rule efforts. China was trapped in failed dynastic rule and internal squabbles. Smaller nations were manipulated to serve their seemingly caring masters.

Asians, for the first time, saw an Eastern power stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Western and oust them. The manner in which the Brit scooted off at the news of the Japanese invasion left a bad aftertaste amongst their subjects in Malaya. Their new masters, they realised, were worse off than their predecessors, igniting the question of self-rule in the hearts of many South East Asian nations.

The Japanese did one right thing, though. They left a nidus on all the lands upon which the newly independent countries prospered later. The Japanese set up many industries to keep up with the needs of the Japanese Military Industrial Complex and the pressures of WW2. The Japanese model of financing and running industries were emulated in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. In fact, after the war, Koreans working in Manchuria returned home to develop their own homegrown businesses.

History suggests that all the colonial masters left their colonies bare. Amongst the various colonial masters, the British are said to be the gentlest of the lot. The Belgians, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans and French were notorious for inflicting brutal scars upon their subjects. Even though the British are known to have left their conquests with functioning governmental machinery, infrastructure and contended society, of late, they are mostly praised for their diplomatic behaviour and geopolitical manipulations. A sample of their calculated meddling was in China. In the name of wanting with the reluctant Chinese, and ended up turning the whole nation into opium addicts. For their effort, the British were gifted with a lease on Hong Kong and areas around it for 100 years. 

This voluminous book is an excellent go-to book to help join the dots to all the history topics we learned during our school days. History was taught to us as if events on the world stage happened in isolation. With age, we realise that every event is linked to each other. The underlying basic themes are geopolitical control, economic dominance and painting a positive narrative of the oppressors. Living true to the age-old adage, money does make the world go round.

The author, P Basu, is an economist by day and a history buff by night. His two decades of nerdy research into the history of Asia helped connect the dots between each and every colonial power's move from unproductive to the rice shores of natives who ushered them in with reverence. In return, the colonialists usurped their happiness, overstayed their welcome and made a slave out of their hosts. They destroyed the natives' civilisation and philosophical wisdom to propagate foreign materialistic self-centred ideology. A new world economic module that emphasised capitalistic mercantilism over humanism prevailed worldwide.

In the epilogue of the book, Basu explains how the Japanese invasion of Asia helped Asians to re-discover themselves to emerge as a force to be reckoned with. The Japanese business module of financing, learning from the Masters and encouraging tertiary education amongst its citizens has shown positive results in Korea and Taiwan. Even though Malaysians, under the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohammad, were 'Looking East' towards the Japanese, they failed miserably. Starting on a better footing than South Koreans, they fared poorly. They emphasised racist policies and never shed their rent-seeking attitudes. The strive to excel through sheer hard work was never on their plates.

(P.S. The book is strife with many trivia that would excite many a nerd. With the weakening of the Qing dynasty, the wreckage of the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion, China was carved up by many European powers. They controlled many geo-strategic areas and ports. The Germans acquired a German base port in Shandong District. German settlers started a brewery in the Tsingtao area to quench the thirst of many weary Europeans in China. This, of course, is now the famous Tsingtao Beer from China.)

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Write t

Nunca Más? Never again?

Argentina 1985 ( Spanish, 2022)
Written and directed: Santiago Mitre

After years of lawlessness in Argentina, after Peron and many ineffective military leaders, the people managed to democratically elect a government in 1983 after the disastrous Falkland Wars. The memory of the extreme torture, planned disappearances, complete lack of dignity and rape in the Dirty War just before peace could not be written off. For the first time after Nüremberg, a court tried military leaders for crimes they carried out as military personnel.

The country was split is whether to persecute the perpetrators. The people decided they should not be persecuted amongst their peers, i.e. court marshalled, as the whole machinery was complicit in the crimes. A group of the population benefitted from the army leaders' action; hence, they objected to prosecuting the junta members.

Against this background, Prosecutor Julio César Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo are chosen for the unenviable task. The trouble is none of the senior lawyers wanted to be in the prosecuting team. They had to resort to a group of non-lawyers and inexperienced fresh-of-the-boat lawyers for the job against those responsible for the bloodiest dictatorship in the history of Argentina. Amidst death threats, political interference and bomb explosion, the team presented a compelling account of the torture the victims of the ruling government had to endure in the name of 'protecting' the nation's sovereignty against rabble-rousers.

This film reminds me very much of the time surrounding the collapse of Najib's regime in the 2018 General Election. In fact, we are still out of the woods yet. The political chameleons complicit in 1MDB and Najib-UMNO's shenanigans are in the same team, which is supposed to be the new ruling party. In essence, the new boss is much the same old boss. Maintaining the hegemony of race and religion in a supposedly multi-ethnic nation was the primary justification for siphoning the country's wealth into UMNO's coffers. Because of this, the newly elected Attorney-General met resistance at all levels. As later events proved, even the then-PM turned out to be a fox guarding the proverbial chicken coop. Even the current weak government comprise the remnants of the regime that brought great infamy to a nation flying high in the 1980s with the promise of becoming a developed nation by 2020. It started its automobile industry at about the same time as Hyundai. Look at Hyundai and compare it to Proton. Korea's football team had made an impact in the World Cup, while Malaysia still struggles to draw with Laos and Nepal. Need not mention about respective movie industries. 

Argentina's 1985 Trial of the Juntas witnesses' descriptions of the atrocities the victims went through are nothing new. The many accounts of torture, humiliation, extrajudicial murders, and non-conformer forced disappearances are not relics of the past. Evil is still very much lurking in society. It rears its ugly head not only in war zones or in mobs. It is even present in civil society. If not, we would not see the brutal murder of Kevin Morais, the abduction of Pastor Koh or the many triad killings that gloss our mainstream media.

(P.S. The chief prosecutor's closing remark during submission included the phrase 'Nunca Más' - that never again such misfeasance should recur. As the human race is around, as long as human greed remains unquashed, atrocities will continue no matter which type of politics is practised.)

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The diplomat's wife and the holy man.

Dancing on the Grave (2023)
Written and directed by Patrick Graham

This an interesting case that, on paper, is considered closed. The victim's next-of-kin asserts that justice has been meted out and the perpetrator is doing time even more than they had bargained. The prosecutors are jubilant about how they solved the case despite the long timeframe it took. The defence (and the affected) are adamant, however, that the accused is being punished for a crime he did not commit.

At one look, it sounds like a case of mismatched personalities from totally different backgrounds coming together in the name of love. This case also reminds us of India's past history, about the Diwans, the aristocrats, and the vibrant Shia-Persian community in Karnataka and the fact that India is not quite a homogenous society but one rich with a plurality of cultures and societies. It takes a peek into the life of the rich and famous ambassador and the type of life the family once led.

Shakereh Khaleeli nee Namazie was a high-spirited 19-year-old member of the rich and elite of India when she was married off to her first cousin, Akbar Mirza Khaleeli. Their grandfather was Sir Mirza Ismail, the Diwan of Mysore. Albar was a diplomat, an envoy to Iran and many other places later. Shakereh was the live wire of all parties and was a born socialite. They went on to have 4 daughters.

With the Iranic Revolution, Sharkereh returned to India whilst Akbar stayed behind to continue his ambassadorial duties. She involved herself in the family construction business.  

Murali Manohar Mishra, aka Swami Shradhananda, came to know the couple around 1982. By 1985, Shikereh unilaterally proclaimed divorce in front of an audience at a mosque after failing to obtain her husband’s talaq. It is said that the Shradhananda, who is not a saintly man but one who proclaimed to have special powers, promised Shikereh a son. They got married in Hindu tradition and lived in Bangalore.

Her action became the talk of the community then. A Shia-Parsi woman of a reputable family marrying a Hindu from a poor background and living as a Hindu was scandalous enough. Her daughters, though, maintained continued telecommunication with their mother. They were then living in Italy with their father. 

In 1991, the second daughter filed a police report for failing to contact her mother. The police were dragging their feet until a habeas corpus case was put up. In 1994, the police managed to get a confession from the Shradhananda. The remains of Shakereh were unearthed within the confines of her home.

The story says that the couple did have a stillbirth. The gender of the child is not mentioned. There were frequent tiffs between them regarding her close communication with her daughters. Shradhananda, the ever-subservient one, started demanding his role as a husband. He had also managed to get himself the power of attorney to all her properties. 

Shradhananda had summoned a wooden box to be made for allegedly water storage purposes. He drugged his wife, rolled her up with a thick blanket into the box and buried her in the courtyard. He managed to convince everyone that Shakereh had gone overseas, holidaying, attending this wedding and that. Shradhananda himself was having ravishing parties, symbolically having dances at the site where her body was buried. (hence, the title. The phrase is defined as ‘celebrating a person's death or downfall triumphantly’.)

The case shocked the nation. In 1994, the mystery was solved. Shradhananda led the police to the body. The exhumation work was videographed and accepted as evidence. Clawing marks from the inside of the box suggested that she was buried alive. DNA confirmation was used for the first time in India.

The judgement at the Session Court passed a death sentence on Swami. It was challenged at the High Court and Supreme Court, which conferred with the sentence. In 2008, 13 years after incarceration, the Supreme Court called it a case of 'a man's vile greed coupled with devil's cunning' but commuted his sentence to life in prison "without remission" and refuse his plea for parole. He has to spend his living years in jail.

It sounds like a cut-and-dry case of a purportedly holy man befriending the rich, gaining the trust of the lady of the house, winning her heart, her hand and subsequently, her property. When the mission was accomplished, she was eliminated. Despite being found guilty by a total of eight judges, Shrahananda's lawyer insists evidence against him is circumstantial. The series gives the defence state their arguments which appear to be mostly harping on technical issues.

But despite the fact that he was found guilty by a total of eight judges from India's trial court, the high court and the Supreme Court, his lawyer insists that the evidence against him at best is circumstantial - and in the web series, we hear from Shraddhananda himself who admits his guilt. Still, at the time of the crime, he just wanted to cover his misdeed and get scot-free.

The miniseries helps to bring out this case to the mainstream, the viewing public wants to know more. They want the story to be built up as if an actual investigation is ongoing. The mental state of Shakireh for wanting to leave her beautiful family and go off with an obviously less erudite than her, and her worldly exposure is not explored.

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Loneliness, death and loss...

The Eternal Daughter (2022)
Director: Joanna Hogg

This is not your usual horror movie, but it has a Gothic feel to it. It is a dark, slow movie with nostalgia, old age and loneliness hanging over it like a theatre drape. 

In the formative when the rebel in us tries to surface, we tend to look at our parents as the worse examples of how parents should bring up their kids. We look at other people's parents and yearn for lost childhood. We blame them for all our not-so-fancy physical attributes and life failures. We could not wait to grow up and get the hell out of their supervision. 

Fast forward in time and space. The hard dents of life knock us back to realisation. We look at our parents through a different lens. We realise that life as adults are neither a walk in the park nor a pleasure cruise. Every corner has a brick wall to give us concussions as we rush through life's journey. 

We look at our parents and see that the springiness of youth and headiness of being young has passed them by. We try to recreate the happy moments of the era that we all shared. We fail to realise that our minds only preserve the pleasant ones. Stirring nostalgic memories is like opening the proverbial Pandora's Box. Intertwined within its webs are a dark forgotten, painful cache of bitter moments, death and pain. Invoking one evokes another spontaneously. 

We look at our parents, and for a moment, it hit us. They are no spring chickens anymore. They are old. With old age comes the question of mortality. Are you ready to let them go? If there were a time when we hated the sight of their shadow, we now want to know all about them. We long to understand how they steered adulthood in one piece. The same journey that they had traversed was easier than we did many years ago. Why is it so complicated now?

We see their old photos. Hold behold, we see our images as adults as carbon copies of theirs. Have we grown to morph as spitting images of them, and their present appearances will be the prototype of our old age? A scary thought! And our demeanour and mannerism, is that why they say the apple does not fall far from the tree?

This movie is a melancholic one. It tells about the life of a middle-aged filmmaker who decided to spend time with her elderly mother in a hotel that was the mother's childhood home. There is a suspicion that their whole hotel stay could be a fragment of the filmmaker's imagination. The hotel is deserted and dark. Nobody other tenants are seen, save for the receptionist and a caretaker. Slowly we realise that both mother and daughter are painfully not different from each other. Each feels irritated and sometimes empathises with the other. Incidentally, both characters are acted by the same actor. This film's recurring themes are loneliness, loss of relationships, and fear of death.

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